state.

tinguishable reminiscence of a primordial union of citizen and The historical development has brought about a progressive evolution of the former, at the same time that the latter has never ceased to be present to the eyes of humanity. During the very same centuries of the Middle Ages when the way was being prepared for the monarchical state and professional officialism, there arose in the mountains of Switzerland a reconstructed model of the primitive democratic commonwealth, while at the same time a different type of a free community, more nearly approaching the requirements of modern life, grew up in the medieval towns.

§ 26. Viewed from the financial standpoint, the division of labor in the work of the state results in a relation of the individual to the commonwealth in virtue of which the individual figures as the beneficiary of a number of services rendered by the state; services which in the primitive form of organization are performed directly by the individual members of the community.

It now becomes a problem how these offices of the state which serve the needs of each individual citizen, are to be compassed by extraneous means, after the direct and spontaneous participation of the citizen in public affairs has apparently ceased.

These extraneous means may be of various kinds. The simplest is the adoption and consistent application of the method which the division of labor has brought into vogue in industrial intercourse in all the economic relations of life: paid service for which a compensation is rendered in economic goods.

As a matter of fact this simplest of all methods, consistently with the general course of economic development, does find an ever wider acceptance as time goes on. Every highly developed commonwealth gives evidence of the presence of this relation of bargain and sale in an ever increasing degree.

But this is not all.

For one thing, there are to be found at every epoch certain

survivals of direct political activity by the body of citizens. In the midst of that process of erosion by which a professional army grows out of the folk-army, some remnant of the universal liability to military service continues to assert itself. In the midst of state absolutism which negatives all participation by the citizen in the affairs of the commonwealth, the idea retains. its vitality in the towns that it is the business of the entire body of citizens to decide on the management of municipal affairs.' Where the antecedents in the way of race character and historical experience of the people have favorably influenced the development of a commonwealth, the element of primitive popular autonomy retains a larger share of power and asserts itself in the struggle against the progressive division of labor.

Especially, the element of initiative and direct participation on the part of the body of citizens is awakened to a new life by any popular movement, which is at its best nothing but an awakening on a large scale of the national spirit that has long lain dormant. And precisely this is the characteristic phenomenon of the present century. Not that this national sentiment has already attained a full consciousness of its own significancewe shall find in what follows that one of the chief difficulties of our finances consists in the inadequacy of that sentiment-but it can at any rate be said that a beginning has been made in our modern states which must either be a false step or must lead to further development in the direction indicated.

27. The political activity of the body of citizens in the modern state ramifies itself in the following manner.

The substructure consists, significantly enough, of the group of activities which proceed on the supposition that the relation of the state to the citizen is that of an apparatus created to perform certain services for him. These activities are an exercise of the rights of suffrage and election, which can have no effect beyond a controlling interposition, and whose immediate office is simply

Ernst Meier, Die Reform der Verwaltungsorganisation unter Stein und Hardenberg (1881), p. 79.

to afford the aggregate of citizens a means of supervising the course of political affairs through the agency of their representatives. But a rational exercise of the suffrage and the right of election, and more especially an adequate supervision of the affairs of state through their representatives, does not necessarily follow from the bare fact of the possession of civil rights by the body of citizens; as a matter of fact the capacity for an adequate exercise of these functions has to be acquired. This fundamental fact of political action therefore leads naturally up to a consideration of the facts relating to participation in the conduct of the every-day business of the state.

This brings us to that broad field of activity which we are accustomed to call "self-government." Within this field the citizen of the modern state is actually directly occupied with a multitude of public duties, quite in contravention of the principle of division of labor that dominates both private and public life, or at least his activity supplements the action of that principle.1 The simpler the duties, the more moderate the requirements in the way of capacity and energy on the part of the citizen, and the more independent the working of self-government; the more serious the duties, the greater the requirements, the more will the local self-government have to depend on the skilled and organized forces of the national administration. The administration of a small rural commune to this day rests in, or has at the present day reverted into the hands of men chosen from among the inhabitants of the place. In the administration of an urban commune, the larger the commune the more help does the element of self-government require from the highly differentiated professional element, and the greater, consequently, the demands on its administration.

A third field is the great and burdensome one of military service. All the way down from the beginnings of German antiquity, with its folk-army gradually transformed by elevation and depression of classes, differentiated into a contrast of armed freemen and unarmed bondmen, then developed into a military pro

'See vol. i. secs. 246-247.

fession for the upper classes, followed in turn by an epoch of mercenary armies and professional soldiers,-through all these mutations in the development of the state, military service has remained a duty incumbent on the entire male population. Only, with the new era it has been reclaimed from its lowly and degenerate state, transfused with a new life and invested with a new dignity. After it had for centuries served to characterize the lowest social class, it has become again what it originally was a universal duty of all able-bodied citizens.

In view of the difficulty of the problem involved in securing the defense of a modern state, the relation of this portion of the citizen's public duties to the unavoidable demands of a division of labor is naturally a very peculiar one. A juryman or a justice of the peace on whom the local self-government devolves the administration of justice, is, according to the premises of local self-government, endowed with an average capacity for the office simply in virtue of his character as citizen. The conscript on the other hand is so far subjected to the demands of a division of labor and of the professional nature of military service, as to be held for a long series of years to the strict discipline of the army very much after the fashion of the professional soldier. Division of labor in the work of the state here trenches so far on the domain of division of labor in private life as to take the citizen away from house and home for years together, simply in order to teach him what belongs to the adequate performance of military duty.

§ 28. While this enumeration covers the chief kinds of personal services rendered the state by the modern citizen, there are certain further considerations to be brought out in the same connection.

In the first place there really is in the modern state, as in the states of the past, a sphere within which what we have held up as contraries are to be found united. It happens even to this day, under a peculiarly favorable conjunction of circumstances, that the demands of modern public life in the way of professional

devotion to the public service, meet with sentiments and conditions such that this vocation is not only adequately recognized to be the logical consummation of the duties of citizenship, but this recognition is also adequately carried out in practice. Whereever there exists an aristocracy which is possessed of an adequate comprehension of its own mission-the devoting of its energies to the conduct of public affairs-and is at the same time possessed of such economic means as will enable it to put forth its energies, not in the character of a paid official class, but with the independence that goes with an "honorary office," there the point is attained where the primitive ideal of civic duty coincides with the intensity of application required in the work of the modern state.

While among the rude men of the commonwealth of Tacitus the charm attaching to adventuresome deeds of violence was a dominant factor in determining the direction taken by the people's activity, it may surely be hoped that at our present advanced stage of culture habituation to work through a period of a couple thousands of years has extended this charm to other activities as well. In point of fact, amidst the great complexity and intricate gradation of activities in the modern state it is not to be overlooked that there is a decided variation in attractiveness as between the different kinds of activities.

I may here refer back to the conclusions reached in the general portion of this work (vol. i. secs. 135-137.) The intrinsic attractiveness as well as the dignity attaching to the work varies according to the nature of the occupation. The "honorary office" [Ehrenamt] will therefore begin only at a point where a certain measure of this element is reached. The office of member of parliament, or of the head of the affairs of state will partake of this character; whereas the designation can have but a negative application when the office of juryman or justice of the peace is spoken of as an honorary office, that is to say, negative in the sense of denoting the absence of compensation rather than implying a positive sense of dignity that leads the citizen to seek the office. Still lower in the scale of occupations,